🔴 Influence is a spectrum. Where do you fall in it?

The influencer is dead; we are all influencers. As a job title, the word has lost meaning. It’s now best understood as a verb — or, if a noun, as something we wield.

There are three distinct types of influence relevant to the creator economy. Today, we’ve defined them so you can know your type of influence and deploy it strategically.

— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor

Influencer, other than social media manager, was the first job created by the internet. It was also an insult, levied at young women posing with products in Instagram photos. At its height, it implied It Girl status — power, reach, and access. It was an alternative, unconventional pathway to financial independence.

Think of Aimee Song, one of the early adopters of the fashion blog movement, who originally built her influence by selling access to an aspirational life via her blog, Song of Style: effortless looks, aesthetically curated spaces, and (try not to cringe) #wanderlust travel content that her audience could admire and recreate through her outfit breakdowns and design tips.

Compare that to someone like Ali Abdaal today, who’s built a multi-million-dollar business teaching productivity systems, study techniques, and business strategies. While Aimee’s early success depended on maintaining the allure of her lifestyle, Ali's influence stems from his ability to help others achieve concrete results — better grades, more efficient workflows, and successful YouTube channels.

In 2025, influencing is an outcome, a byproduct of a creator’s craft, credibility, and consistency. Save for its relevance as a marketing term in an industry worth over 30 billion, it’s evolved beyond just a role you have, and become something you wield strategically.

While lifestyle and aspiration still sell, the successful influencers of yesteryear must now layer additional value to survive today’s more competitive creator landscape. Many of them have evolved into today’s creators, building multifaceted ecosystems around their work, like launching podcasts, developing product lines, creating communities, and establishing media properties that extend far beyond their personal brand.

Our editor, Francis, has spent the better part of two years interviewing creators every week, asking them to define the term 'creator,’ shaping the definition we use to guide our coverage, reporting, and analysis:

In conversations with former Spotlight guests on the difference between creators and influencers, a consistent theme emerged: these experts distinguish the two based on what they sell.

Kyle Sheldon, who owns a soccer marketing agency that includes a collective of creators, emphasizes the production capability:

Last Tuesday’s Spotlight guest, creator-journalist expert Liz Kelly Nelson, argues that "influencer is a marketing term" that doesn't fit people doing mission-driven work. For creators focused on educating, informing, or solving problems, the label feels reductive.

These perspectives point to a broader fundamental shift. If creators have outgrown the influencer label, and influencing itself has evolved, then the creator economy has also moved beyond the binary of influencer versus creator.

Rather than treating influence as a job title or identity, we propose a different framework: influence as a spectrum of strategic capabilities. This approach recognizes that all creators wield influence, and different types of influence are effective in various contexts, serve distinct audiences, and require tailored strategies to be effective.

Understanding where you fall on the spectrum of influence and how to articulate your unique value is crucial for anyone building an audience in the digital age.

Whether you're pitching brand partnerships, negotiating rates, or deciding which platform to prioritize, knowing your role on the spectrum of influence and how you can best wield it changes everything about your strategy. Today’s most successful creators know precisely which type they possess and how to deploy it effectively.

Liz gave us an excellent starting point to expound on — breaking influence down into three core modes: micro-influence, macro-influence, and expert-influence, each level with distinct characteristics.

Relationship-first dynamics: Trust built through repeated face-to-face interactions, shared experiences, and mutual accountability. Influence flows through personal relationships rather than content consumption.

Context and framing power: As Liz noted, these influencers "help you frame and form the context that you are going through life." They help people interpret what it means for their daily lives.

Geographic specificity: Their influence is bounded by physical community. A PTA president might sway 200 families on school policy, but have zero influence two towns over.

Attention aggregation: Success measured by reach metrics — followers, views, engagement rates. Influence flows through content distribution rather than personal relationships.

Parasocial relationships: Audiences feel a connection to the creator, but the creator is unaware of individual audience members. One-to-many communication creates the illusion of intimacy.

Algorithmic amplification: Platform algorithms determine reach. Creators are constantly adapting to algorithm changes, trending topics, and platform preferences.

Content-dependent: Influence tied to consistent content production. Stop posting, lose relevance quickly.

Competence-based trust: Audience believes in the creator's ability to deliver results. Trust is earned through demonstrated expertise, not personality or lifestyle.

Educational value exchange: Audiences engage because they learn something useful. The relationship is transactional but valuable — knowledge for attention/money.

Expertise documentation: Content serves as proof of competence. Each tutorial, case study, or insight builds credibility and authority.

Community of practice: Audiences often become practitioners themselves, creating a learning community around the creator's expertise (and one that circulates value for all members, even after the original creator is no longer present).

Having an audience of any size means you have influence; having influence means you have a responsibility to your audience.

A micro-influence creator recommending a local business can impact its success. A macro-influence creator’s offhand comment can shift public conversations. An expert-influence creator’s advice can start trends and shape how their audience approaches their work, finances, and business strategy.

Wielding influence requires intention — and its impact depends entirely on how thoughtfully, consciously, and strategically you choose to use it.